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MiniBar April Meeting
- Location
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- Who attended?
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Estimated attendance: 270 people attended.
MiniBar April 25th
Here the program - besides some start ups we will have a special focus on Social Innovation using web technology.
Seedcamp.com - 08 investment program - Reshma Sohoni
Kindo.com - new generation family tree
Jivelo.com - review site for dating and personal experience - Guido Picus
Make Your Mark - entrepreneurship campaign - Dan McQuillan
Social Innovation Special
the two winners of Social Innovation Camp will present - plus we will have Paul Miller speaking about the .ORG revolution
The Carbon Account - personal carbon calculation - Jamie Andrews
Main Sponsor: London Development Agency and Make Your Mark
Drinks Sponsor: Gimme
Supporting Sponsor: Realeyes
Media Partner: Intruders.tv
Supported by: BBC Innovation, O'Reilly
The MiniBar Mantra
MiniBar is a social evening in East London which offers people a chance to snaffle some free beer while discussing p2p, Creative Commons, web applications, social networking and general Web 2.0 (3.0) mayhem & fandango.
Here you can find people who will help you making your next project work. The event is what we call 'useful fun'. Usually there are 200+ of London's - and beyond - finest web entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, tech journalists, bloggers, VC?s, and technology freaks.
What we offer:
- Web-Entrepreneurs can present their start-up and tech ideas
- Presentations will be archived at openbusiness.cc/minibar
- Some start ups will be featured on O'Reilly GMT, the European O'Reilly blog
And of course, Free Drinks, A Lot of Fun and many Useful People
Who you will meet?
From famous digerati and tech investors such as Esther Dyson (angel investor in Flickr and delcious), Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu), to tech journalists (Guardian, BBC), bloggers (OpenBusiness etc), Open Source developers (Drupal, Ubuntu), web designers, Creative Commons enthusiasts, web entrepreneurs (last.fm, eCourier, Tioti) to many coders, media artists and other generally useful, interesting and hyper connected people.
Past presentations include: Drupal user group, Esther Dyson, Directionless.info, Magnatune, BookMoch, Tioti, Modfilms, BurnStation, Mix&Mash
More Info at: OpenBusiness.cc and barcamp.org/minibar
Who attended?
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“ I thought the event was well organised and publisced. My only criticism is that the presentations (althought interesting) went on far too long. From what I can gather people attend these events to meet with either VC's, like-minded professionals and old colleagues. I felt that the length of these presentations took away from these important meet-and-greet sessions. ” -
Rich Tibbett (+1 guest)“ Hi Christian, I was at the meeting, more to the back than the front and couldn't really hear the presenters. The volume of the speakers was a little too low. In addition I used to really love the 3 minute presentation format of previous meetings. I found myself switching off a couple of times as people took 10 minutes to get through what was essentially a simple idea! Can we bring that back? I will attend further meetings but we need to bring back the Minibar edge! ” -
“ Good, Standing for the entire presentaiton was hard work. Would've enjoyed some seats ” -
“ Get early. That's the best time to chat. The presentations can be hindered by poor sound quality. Afterwards they tend to play terrible music, which forces everyone outside. Thankfully the outside bit is really good. ” -
“ My first MiniBar, and probably not my last, but it wasn't as good as I expected it to be. The venue is the biggest problem -- it's just too noisy. The music at the start precluded easy conversation for a lot of people, which is a big irony for a networking evening. Then, when the talks were taking place, the general chatter of people further away from the stage made it hard to hear and must have been dispiriting for the people presenting -- they deserved more respect and attention from the crowd. Part of that lack of attention, I'm sure, is to do with the room -- why not move it to a better venue with a less elongated shape that would be more conducive to everyone being able to see and feel like they're at least slightly close to the front and so pay more attention. Aside from that, it was interesting to mill about and meet new people. In four words: Nice premise, naff premises. ” -
Sarah Blow (+1 guest)“ Couldn't hear the speakers, and there were very few investors or people there who were interested in starting ideas, just people looking to sell to one another which was pretty pointless really. It's a shame coz it's not what it used to be all about! ” -
“ Very good opportunity to network, shame the free bar ran out early on???!!!! ” -
“ It was very useful, full of interesting people all involved in their own projects. A great informal place to meet other like minded web based entrepreneurs. I walked away with a handful of useful telephone numbers. ” -
David (+1 guest)“ Two of us travelled in from Sussex on the promise of free beer and good conversation. The free beer had apparently gone by the time we arrived at 6.30pm and the music inside of the venue was too loud to converse comfortably. We had an interesting conversation with Peter Jones and then listened to the presentations, of which Christian was a good facilitator. Interesting ideas in the main but surprising lack of strategic thought... particularly, how does this idea make money. Chatter levels from the other end of the room rose as the presentations progressed, which was a shame bearing in mind how much work the presenters had put in. Overall, not a great format for serious discussion, nor for facilitating conversation with people other than the ones you came with... there was nothing there that you couldn't get in any London pub. My suggestion would be a slightly smaller group in a dedicated venue and a mechanic for creating interaction. Oh, and enough free beer to go round! ” -
Sharmita Saha (+2 guests)“ Very impressed with the turnout and really liked the format where speakers each have 3 minutes to present their biz! Great opportunity and I hope to get up there myself at a future meetup! ” -
“ SICamp is the best thing to have come out of MiniBar. ” -
“ It was quite good, although the pounding music at the start meant that shouting was required to network successfully. That didn't set a great precedent for trying to get people to respect the speakers when some quiet was needed. Otherwise a good event, and I'll come along to another one. ” -
Jake Stride (+1 guest)“ This was my first minibar after trying to come to a previous few. The presentations were great, although it would have been nice if people at the back were a bit quieter. Will definitely come back, the journey from Coventry makes it a bit of a mission! ” -
Ross Tweedie (+1 guest)“ I thought it was good, and was able to see how far the other teams from the Social Innovation Camp had progressed. This highlighted how well our team has progressed in relation to the others. ” -
“ It was alright but missed the networking before the presentations. Would be a good idea to start at 19 rather than 18 ” -
“ Time keeping needs to be tighter as people got bored very quickly. How about a big clock on the side of the screen like the old quiz shows? ” -
“ I had a good evening - thanks for the drink! A shame with the sound (i.e. people chatting at the back of the bar) as I really struggled to hear some of the presentations. But from what I did hear, really inspiring and interesting projects. It's great to get a good idea of what's out there and how people have been successful but also that lots of people share the same struggles. ”
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“ The MC / Host would have suited a beach party better than organiser a networking event. At least control the audience so we can hear what's going on Color code people's badges etc. I don't come there to just talk to random people. I often want to meet specific people e.g. I am interested in investors and entrepreneurs so I want an easy way to identify them I felt the quality of the pitches were of a very low calibre as well. As it stands I don't consider this to be a serious event in terms of the entrepreneurial world ”
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John Howson (+4 guests)“ accousics were terrible and some presentations badly thought through otherwise good ”
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“ very friendly bunch of people in attendance and got chatting to various random people. the presentations were also very interesting, great to see what other people are thinking and developing. ”
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“ Really interesting - great buzz! Met some great people. Enjoyed most of the presentations, but I felt they went on a little longer than was comfortable when you're standing up! Definitely going to the next one. ”
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“ Excellent learning as usual ”
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Jochen (+1 guest)“ Thanks for organising this. Social entrepreneurs were really interesting ”
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Duncan Malcolm (+5 guests) -
Anna (+1 guest) -
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Gerred Blyth (+1 guest) -
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Christian (+2 guests) -
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Ged Carroll (+1 guest) -
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Your organizer's refund policy for MiniBar April Meeting
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